1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a complex marking determining device and a complex marking determining method that determines whether a lane marking of a road on which a vehicle is traveling is a complex marking.
2. Description of Related Art
As technology for determining whether a lane marking of a road on which a vehicle is traveling is a complex marking, technology is known that determines the type of boundary marking of a road on which a vehicle is traveling (hereinafter, also referred to simply as “traveling road”) based on an image of the traveling road, as described in Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 2005-141487 (JP 2005-141487 A). This determination technology attempts to reliably recognize a boundary marking of the traveling road by setting a horizontal lane searching line on the image, detecting potential lane points using this lane searching line, and the determining the type of boundary marking of the lane according to the densities and shapes of these potential lane points.
With the determination technology described above, in a situation in which the resolution of a camera capturing the image is low, such as with a distant area of the traveling road or the like, the detection accuracy of the potential lane points decreases, which makes it difficult to accurately identify the number of potential points. Therefore, there may be cases in which it is not possible to determine whether a lane marking of a lane is a complex marking or a single marking.